Family marks 1-year anniversary of four deaths at waterfront

Thursday

Apr 12, 2012 at 2:00 AMApr 12, 2012 at 4:26 PM

About 20 family members of LaShanda Armstrong visited the Newburgh waterfront of the Hudson River to mark the year-old tragedy.

DOYLE MURPHY

1:48 p.m. UPDATE: About 20 people visited the Newburgh waterfront shortly after 1 p.m. today. They laid a wreath and flowers on the surface of the water where LaShanda Armstrong drove herself and four children into the river. One child survived, La'Shaun Armstrong.He laid a pink teddy bear on the water. A pastor said a prayer and the family released balloons into the cloudy sky. Then they hammered a cross with the names of the victims into the ground. They were still on the scene about 45 minutes later and surrounded by media. ---------------------------------

Todd Johnson knows people want to know why it happened.

"I always get that question," he says. "I don't know."

Johnson's son, La'Shaun Armstrong, was the only person in the van to survive that night. The 10-year-old slipped out the driver's-side window and swam to the shore as his mother's Chevy Venture sank into the dark water, carrying her and La'Shaun's three siblings to their death.

Johnson wrestles with these kinds of thoughts from his prison cell at Fishkill Correctional Facility. The 27-year-old expects to be paroled in August, ending his sentence for a 2004 robbery.

Johnson says he's seen La'Shaun several times and written letters in the past year, but he won't know how badly his son was harmed or what he needs until they can be together every day. He says he knows La'Shaun didn't walk out of that river unscathed.

"The reality is he's not going to be fine," Johnson says. "No one is going to be fine after a trauma like that."

The night of April 12, 2011, will probably always remain in Newburgh police Lt. Bruce Campbell's memory. The veteran cop started diving in 1993 and immediately joined Newburgh's dive team when he came on the force in 1995. He's been part of countless searches in the murky waters of the Hudson, but the search that night stands out.

"This was definitely one of the worst scenes I've ever seen," Campbell said.

Anything involving a child victim is bad, Campbell said, and police quickly learned they were looking for three.

Armstrong had told the children they were going to the river that night. Thinking they would hang out and maybe visit some shops, La'Shaun ran up the stairs to their William Street apartment and grabbed some money. He and his half-brothers, 5-year-old Landen and 2-year-old Lance Pierre, climbed into the rear seats of the van with their baby sister, Laianna Pierre.

Armstrong had been acting strangely in the past weeks, posting cryptic messages on her Facebook page and apologizing to perplexed family members. New information suggests she had begun to make preparations for a dark end a month before the murder-suicide. On March 15, she took out life insurance policies: $500,000 on herself and $20,000 each on her four children, according to police.

Armstrong also had a strained relationship with Jean Pierre, the father of her three youngest children.

Pierre later told police in a sworn statement that he had knocked on her door that night and then waited outside when she didn't answer, hoping to drop off some snacks for the kids. Pierre said she looked like she had been crying when she finally opened the door.

Before leaving in the van, Armstrong hugged Pierre, he said. She later called, Pierre said.

"She said something like she does not want to put me through this anymore and that she loved me," Pierre said. "I tried to talk to her then and she hung up on me."

La'Shaun later told a detective his mother called family members and told them she was sorry and she loved them.

"And then my mom said that we were all going to die together," La'Shaun said.

The van, a 2002 Chevrolet Venture, was equipped with the automotive equivalent of an airplane's black box. A state police trooper was later able to download information from the computer chip. It showed the van accelerated in the five seconds leading up to the plunge into water, hitting speeds of 22, then 23, then 24 mph, even as Armstrong appears to have taken her foot off the accelerator. She never hit the brake.

La'Shaun would later draw a picture of the horrifying trip, sketching his mother's sad face in the van window with an arrow pointing toward a squiggly river.

La'Shaun said his mother became scared when they hit the water, crying, "Why am I doing this?"

His mother had climbed into the back seat with the children. La'Shaun crawled into the front, opened the window and swam out.

"I sat there in the water and I looked back and the car was sinking and I heard my mother and my brothers and sister was yelling," he told police.

Campbell would later discover the van turned 180 degrees by the river and mired in several feet of mud on the bottom of the Hudson. The gearshift was set in reverse as if Armstrong had changed her mind in the final seconds.

Johnson says no one can undo that night. The only hope is to show La'Shaun he can move on.

"We can't bring any of these people back, so the only good that can come out of this is through him now," Johnson says.

Now 11 years old, La'Shaun lives with his grandmother, Datrice Armstrong, and attends school in Orange County. Johnson and the Armstrongs have settled an earlier custody dispute, and Johnson said it's been good for his son and Datrice Armstrong to have each other. The whole family will have to work together, Johnson says, and he's looking forward to the day he can reunite with his boy.